It's been a bit, huh? I've been logging 10-12 hours a day at work. So when I get home, it's just.......zone. I don't think I've even logged into NN 5 times since my last blog, really only logged in tonight to share a milestone...

8 days from today will mark 6 months since I've wanted to or have Self-harmed/seriously contemplated suicide. I don't even think about either really.

We are all a product of our environment. If you don't like the product, change your environment.

Ya'll know I've been busy trying to fast pass my way back to management with my old company. It's why I'm hardly around anymore. Last week I put in 50+ hours, due to the holiday (Happy belated 4th Ya'll....MURICA!) I'm pleased to report my store broke the $1,000,000 weekly sales that week for the first time. My bakery also broke it's own records....$26,500+ for the week!!

Yesterday, my manager told me I'd be covering the department. He, the assistant manager, and the lead full timer would be off. My boss would be in 1st thing in the am to place orders and do paperwork, but would leave shortly after I got there. Piece. Of. Cake. Yes?

Ahahahahahahahaha! So I show up on time, which for me means 30 minutes before I'm scheduled to clock in. Have to chain smoke and guzzle coffee before it's 15 till, and I can clock in. Which, I thought everyone could do, clock in 15 before your scheduled. Apparently not. It's only managers with this bonus.... hehehehe. It seems my store manager set me up with manager privilege THE DAY I started working. *dusts shoulders*

Anyyyyyywayyyyy.... Clock in, grab my notebook and start walking the sales floor, noting what needs to be baked ASAP, and what needs to be baked sometime today because it's going out if date tonight. Any holes (no product) or anything we have an overabundance of (DON'T MAKE IT!). My manager comes over with the dept.'s notebook....looks at my list, and asks if we can just tape mine to his. Lol.

He goes over tomorrow's ad with me, so I know what to have everyone make more of and such. Then he tells me that my mid shift clerk has called out. Ain't no thing. I got my opener clerk, an amazing lil 70 year old lady who keeps up with even ME, and can still give great customer service. I immediately adjust my game plan, though. All good.

Manager leaves. The bakery is a finely tuned machine. I checked the mixer's production list (He's a lazy sumbitch, and adjust a LOT), look at my decorator's orders for the day and give her a "to-do list" to add to the orders, and have my baker dealing with a few odds and ends. After his lunch, I'll take over setting up and baking, he'll down stack and sort the frozen order, and my opener and mid shift clerks will handle the front.

30 minutes later, my lil old battle ax of an opener is saying she's freezing....when the rest of us are fine. I do the mom hand-on-the-forehead thing to a woman who could be my grandma. She's burning up. I shake my head, and point her lil bony ass out the department. She grouches, complains, bitches, and moans. Nope. No, No, NO.

I put my foot down, explaining that she'll likely feel much better tomorrow. But in the mean time, we don't need her falling out OR infecting the rest of the bakery. She refused until I offered to call her daughter.... heh. Lil D get's this gleam in her eye and says, "Ooooh.....you play DIRTY!" Off she goes....

We are now down TWO. Ugh......Okay. Change the game plan again. I'll be up front, handling customers, packing bread, AND setting up/baking off product, baker will throw frozen by himself. Mixer mixes. Decorator....welll....ya get it.

Holy FUCK we were busy!!! And even when I'm wondering how we'll refill the shelves, I'm still focused on the customer AND selling our product. One dude came in, obviously on an errand from his wife with a list and NO clue.... I approached him, asked what he needed... "Bratwurst buns", he says. Well... you can use a hot dog bun for brats, but I knew we had 18 packs of hogie rolls sitting on the shelf that we made yesterday and would go out of date tonight, so that's what I showed him. (BTW, they really ARE great for brats) so he buys 10 packs....I also sold him 3 key lime pies......telling him he'd get brownie points for thinking about dessert tho it wasn't on the list.....

I HAVE to take a lunch. Both because if I don't chainsmoke at least 3 ciggys Ima gonna dieeeeee, and because I'll get in trouble if I don't. So I clock out for a quick 30 minutes when my closer comes in. She finishes packing all the bread and rolls and such. Starts setting up all the frozen product that has to sit overnight in the cooler before we can bake it, etc. I set up cookies. I mean I SET UP COOKIES. 20 packs of 2 dozen chocolate chip, 15 sugar, 8 oatmeal and 8 peanut butter.

Closer goes to lunch, and in between helping customers, I package the cookies. I sell, and I sell, and I sell more. When I have the last of the cookies packed..........that's all there is on the shelf. FUCK!! Gotta do ANOTHER run of 'em.....and there's only 2 key lime pies left. My closer takes pity on me and sets up/bakes off another round while I make a quick 3 cases of key lime pies.

Baked and packaged some more donuts, and I'm finally to the point where I really can't bake, package, or set up anything else. So, I clock out an hour late and head home.

I can not WAIT to see the numbers (sales) from today. It is gonna be epic, I assure you.

Oh! Hey! You're still here???? After reading all that? Bless yer heart!!!!! Thanks for letting me vent . And hey! My next day off is next Tuesday!

I'm here! I promise! Well, okay. So I'm not, but it's the thought that counts, right?

Let's see.... Work has been awesome. We were busier than shit over the 4th of July holiday. All the full timers were scheduled 6 days last week. I ended the week with a little over 50 hours. Which is the first time since I quit there 5 years ago I've worked that much in a week. Needless to say, I'm beat. Spent all day yesterday in bed, didn't even change outta my pj's, and watched a Law and Order SVU marathon alllllllllll day. It was heaven.

Something I've been trying to work out in my mind, maybe ya'll can help. My mom's hair is longer than mine, and mine's grown quite a bit:


So me and Mom were thinking about a way to "auction" our hair at her church. We would donate the hair to Locks of Love, and all the cash from the auction would be donated to Relay for Life. But how to set it up? Like, if we reach $100, we'll each cut off 10 inches... reach $200 we'll cut off 20 inches... etc.. I'm just wondering how to go about it. I don't wanna limit how much $$ we can bring in. Ugh....logistical nightmare. Anyway, if any of ya'll have any ideas, please PLEASE let me know? Only 4 months to go!

Everyone has them. Some are grand, some unattainable. Mine are pretty simple. A little brown house on a lake. A vegetable garden, some fruit trees. A hot tub just off the Florida room, where me and my fella will soak up to our necks in the crisp fall air. Sipping our homemade wine and watching the sunset. Or dangling our feet off the dock, fishing poles in hand.

Not asking too very much, am I? *grins*

So, apparently Florida makes it ridiculously simple to get your Carry/conceal permit. I've got my class scheduled. Going to be buying my dream gun.....a Glock 36 .45. Soon I'll be carrying. CAN NOT WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!

Why do I love coming to NN?

Oh geeze, how much time do you have? Nine years ago, my (now ex) husband found this site as a place for us to explore our newfound love of exhibitionism. Well...my new found love. He liked taking pics and "showing me off". That alone was the extent of our participation on the site. Until one day, out of boredom, I signed into chat. Juicy was there, and right away said "Hi Sheve". I immediately X'ed out. I was just sure the room was full of sexual deviants and perverts. Lol....well, it was, I came to find out, but in an epicly awesome way. I went back, of course. As well as started blogging and reading blogs.

I've met some of the coolest, sweetest, nicest, funniest, and most amazing people here. Some I've actually met IRL (27 and counting, actually), and some not. They are people I love dearly. These people MAKE NN what it is for me.

I come here to be myself. Here, I can say and "do" things I can't possibly in the real world. Although the NN'ers I've met have all said I'm exactly the same out ere as I am in here, lol. Go fig, eh? I come here to laugh, to cry, to vent, to kill time. I come when I'm lonely, or when I'm excited and want to share something wonderful that's happened.

NN and the people where here for me when I divorced my husband. They were here to cheer me on when I met and fell in love with Dummy. They supported us, buying t-shirts and stickers when we opened our shop, and listened to me cry when we had to close it..... They held my hand when that marriage was breaking apart, and lifted me up when I decided to leave. They now follow along in my life as I start over. Two sides to every story. I've been called on when a NN friend needed an ear too. I've watched love bloom, or fade, children born, or children pass. I've been on the phone at 4am with someone I've never met before and cried my eyes out as the person told me their sibling committed suicide that very same night.

Why do I come to NN? Do you really have to ask?

I love you crazy naked people.

Finally, a day off! Going 6 days in a row working damn near killed me. Prolly wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't a 30-45 minute drive one way. Still better than the last time I worked for the company. Then I lived 1.5 hours away! O.o

I woke up at 7am this morning, and had an initial moment of panic, trying to remember what time I was supposed to be at work. My heart was pounding, and I was about to leap outta bed to get dressed, when I realized I was off. Big sigh of relief, then stepped outside to smoke. When I came back in, my Mom was waking up. She looked at me with surprise and asked me what I was doing awake at 7am on my day off. I laughed and said "smoke break" and went back to bed.

Woke up at 11am, stretched, yawned, and decided I could stay up now. Had a cup of coffee before Mom asked me if I wanted to go to lunch. Lunch? Ha. I had chinese buffet for breakfast. Like a BOSS!

Cleaned my room, Organized my bathroom. Annnnnnd that's all I had to do for my weekend. Tomorrow I'm hitting the beach and being general lazy ass.

Been a lil scarce lately. Sorry. Working my lil bony ass off, actually. I'm still in love with my store. It's busy. There's a fantastic crew working with me. My manager's (both dept. and store) are awesome and funny and not the least bit dickheadish.

I started mixing/baking bread this week. The past 5 years I've spent my professional life decorating. I haven't mixed or baked ANYTHING since I left the company. So starting me out decorating and/or packing out product was my manager's way of easing me in.

Saturday bossman tells me that I'll be mixing on Sunday. I have had NO remedial training whatsoever. I mean, I remember most of it, but there's a bunch of new stuff, and I've forgotten a lot too. NOT to mention, All the equipment is newer, and I've never used any of it! I am immediately stressed, add to the equation, there won't be ANYone there that has the least bit of knowledge when it comes to mixing, the equipment, baking times, etc.

Gee. I know I'm good....but at least give me a LIL help, eh?

I was severely stressed yesterday, rushed, irritated, and in general NOT a happy girl. Poor Meanie tried to make me feel better during lunch when I called and spent a good 30 minutes telling him how bad I sucked, how slow I was, and grrrrrrrr'd. Coming back from lunch, the bread I'd mixed was coming out of the oven..... and it was spot on. Crackled egg-shell crust, great color, perfect texture. I was over the moon.

Okay, so everyone is their worst critic. I get this. There are two things I dislike when it comes to working. 1. Being anything less than....well... perfect. and 2. Being slow. And I know it was my first day back in 5 years...but I expected more of myself.

I mixed again today. With much less stress, and only a fraction of the frustration. I need another rack cover. Dough that's been mixed and portioned has to sit under a covered rack to "proof" before forming into loaves or sticks. I could have had ALL the bread mixed and portioned (scaled)....but there's only 2 rack covers. I asked my manager to order another one. He asked why. I explained I hated being held up because I couldn't mix more dough until I had formed the previous batches.

....I guess I'm making the bakers look bad. So sorry. Keep the fuck up or get left behind. This is NOT an 8 hour job. It's 4.5.....MAYBE 5 hours, TOPS. Start to finish. INCLUDING cleaning and paperwork.

Ah well. Needless to say, today I rocked it. Even IF I didn't have that 3rd rack cover. My bread was beautiful. And I'm proud of what I do.

I've been here two weeks now. And it could totally be the nature of the business......but when I started. We (the bakery) were up 10% over what we had made the previous year. Since I've been there, we're now up 25%. Not saying it's BECAUSE of me.... *bites lip and looks around* ......just saying.....

So I've been back at my former job for a week now. It's pretty cool, I just fell right back into it, hit the ground running and haven't been needing too much training. I have 10 months to get back up to speed, then go through all the testing and such for Assistant manager.

I'm in love with my store. I always do better with stores geared more towards tourists than I do the "hometown" stores. There's a different energy. And, to be honest, tourists are usually in fantastic moods, lol. How grumpy can ya be on vacation at some of the worlds most beautiful beaches? Sunburns.....but even then they're happy.

All my plans seem to be falling into place. I'm looking forward to how awesome everything will be when everything is in place. Y'all are gonna see a very very happy kricket.

I'm pretty damn fearless...it really takes a lot to scare me.

That being said......fuck a big bunch of spiders!!